Confessions: The Private School Murders (8 page)

It was dinnertime
in apartment 9G at the Dakota—the eccentric, luxurious, very cloistered building with a gossip-column present and a sensational past—and I was in the kitchen, preparing tandoori chicken, the Indian dish for which I was named. Yes, I was named after a type of poultry preparation. My parents had been foodies with a weird sense of humor.

Harry had fired up the tandoor oven, and Hugo was vigorously washing the broccoli, his contribution to the rather ambitious five-dollars-a-head austerity dinner.

Jacob finished expertly chopping the carrots for the salad, laid his knife down, and cleared his throat.

“Children, there’s something you should know,” he
said. “There was a filing today before Judge Warren’s probate court, and all I can tell you is that sometimes when a door closes, another door opens.”

“What does that mean?” Harry asked, looking up from his history text.

“What does it mean,
literally
?” Jacob asked him.

“No, Jake. I understand the aphorism,” Harry replied sarcastically. “What door is opening?”

Hugo shook the broccoli, creating a little local rainfall, and said, “I hope if a door is opening, it’s not the one to this apartment, because I don’t want to move.”

Jacob took the broccoli from Hugo and put it in a steamer. “I would tell you…”

“But then you’d have to kill us?” I asked, eyeing the knife in front of him, wondering if he’d ever actually used one to kill a man.

“No, Tandoori. I would tell you, but it’s just a filing,” he replied, taking a sip of his sherry. “Let’s wait a little longer and see if we have good news or bad. To tell you more would be cruel.”

I walked over to the counter where Jacob was standing, picked up the bottle of sherry, and took a swig, staring into his eyes the entire time.

“Then why bring it up at all?” I asked. “Trying to let us know you have something over us?”

Jacob blinked and wiped his hands on his apron. “No. Of course not. You’re right, Tandy. I shouldn’t have said anything yet if I wasn’t intending to tell you everything.” He looked around at the boys. “I apologize.”

I took another sip of sherry, and Jacob removed the bottle from my hand.

“That’s enough.” He set the bottle aside and reached for the knife again.

“Are you a spy, Jacob?” I asked him.

He sighed and smiled, cutting into a cucumber.

“Of course you are,” I continued. “But a spy for whom? Uncle Peter? Or maybe the dead?”

“What a wonderful, vivid imagination you have, Tandy.”

I narrowed my eyes. A vivid imagination or razor-sharp instincts? Only time would tell.

12

After dinner the four of us
scattered like billiard balls, Hugo to his room and his manuscript, Harry to the piano in the living room, Jacob to Katherine’s room. Once everyone was safely tucked away, I headed down the hallway to the room that had at one time been so secret, I hadn’t even known it was there until after my parents died. I used the key I kept on a long chain around my neck to open the door, closed it quietly behind me, and hit the switch.

Light filled the room, illuminating my father’s file cabinets and his glittering chemistry equipment. His graphs still hung on the walls, those colorful bars that had charted the effects of the pills on his guinea pig children. This had once been his lab, but now it was my office.

My very own PI headquarters.

I had kept the charts so that I would never forget what had been done to us, but I’d restocked the lab with my own equipment and books on forensic science.

I booted up my computer and had just typed the name
Stacey Blackburn
into the search engine when there was an urgent knock on the hidden door. I opened the lock, and Hugo barreled in.

“Not now, Hugo. I’m working.”

“I’m here to help,” he said. He went to the second computer and logged in.

“I thought you were working on Matty’s biography.”

“I’m taking five,” he replied. “Tell me what you need.”

I blew out a sigh and went back to my workstation. “Lena Watkins,” I said. “Age about sixteen, lived on the Upper West Side, died last month of a gunshot wound.”

Hugo bent over the keyboard and tapped a few keys. He knew how to hack into the NYPD computer system and get out without getting caught. It was a skill that could come in handy.

Hugo read, “ ‘Lena Watkins, Ninety-Second and Amsterdam, gunshot to the temple at close range.’ Sound right?”

I nodded. “Witnesses?”

“No. Uh, her mother said Lena had been depressed. She was found dead with a gun in her hand, so…”

“They think suicide,” I finished. “Send that page to me, okay, Hugo? I’ll go over the rest myself.”

My computer beeped, and I settled in to read. The first oddity that caught my eye was the fact that the gun was unregistered. An unregistered gun was a pretty weird thing for a wealthy sixteen-year-old Manhattanite to have in her possession.

“Lena
was
on antidepressants, but her parents said the pills were working,” I said to Hugo. “Not only that, but she never talked about killing herself. She had been down but was coming out of it, and it says here that she didn’t leave a suicide note. Which is kind of odd.”

“If I offed myself, I’d leave a note,” Hugo said, glancing at my father’s charts on the walls. “Unlike
some
people.”

“Tell me about it,” I replied, facing him. “Also, get this: Lena had put a down payment on a new car and had gotten accepted early to Smith College. This doesn’t really add up to suicidal depression. Not as I see it.”

I turned back to the computer, but I could feel Hugo’s eyes still on me.

“What is it?” I asked.

“You know I kind of idolize your ability to multitask, Tandy. But why don’t you try saving Matthew before you go figuring out a whole mess of other murders? I mean, at least Matty’s still alive.”

I glanced at him sharply, feeling a thump of guilt and sorrow.

“Please?” he added, looking, for the first time in a long time, like a regular little boy.

Hugo looked up to Matthew the way I’d adored Katherine, so I didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth—that Matthew himself thought he might be guilty. And that I had to focus on as many things as possible right now just to keep myself from focusing on
that
.

“Hey, I can do both,” I said gently. “I promise.”

Hugo rolled his eyes and started rummaging through a file drawer at the bottom of a cabinet. “Whatever.”

Then, out of nowhere, he suddenly fell back and screamed.

“Tandy!” he shouted, scuttling back on his hands and feet like a crab, a look of sheer terror on his face. “Run!”

13

Hugo knocked over the computer stand,
which crashed to the floor. I was already running to my brother’s side, but something stopped me cold. It was oily and slick and was pouring onto the floor in a slithering black tube. Suddenly it stopped and reared up, a good twelve inches off the floor.

The thing unfurled a hood at the back of its neck. Hugo flinched. It was a snake. A cobra, to be more precise. And this cobra was pissed off.

“Don’t. Move,” I said through my teeth.

I knew a lot about snakes. For instance, I knew that any movement was guaranteed to agitate the cobra. I also knew that if it struck Hugo, neurotoxins would likely kill him before an antivenom could be found.

“Tannnnnnndy!”
he cried.
“Help meeeeeee!”

“I’m
thinking
,” I replied, my heart slamming against my ribs. “Just don’t move.”

“You said that already,” he replied.

The snake began to sway. A very bad sign. I grabbed my phone from my pocket and called Jacob. He answered on the first ring. I tried to stay calm, but my voice was in its highest register.

“Jacob, there’s a snake in the apartment. A venomous snake.”

“Where are you?” Jacob was all business. The cobra eyed Hugo like he was a piece of meat.

“In my office.”

I heard fumbling. The sound of a door opening. “Your room?”

“No. My office. It’s past my room on the other side of the hall. I’ll open the door.”

“TandyTandyTandyTandyTandy.”
My fearless little brother was keening in terror.

“Hugo, I’m right
here
. Just stay still.”

I dropped to all fours, keeping my eyes on the snake. It was only four feet from Hugo’s right foot. He was wearing shoes, but his naked ankle was within striking distance. I knew the snake wouldn’t attack unless it felt threatened, but that inch of bare skin still looked like a bull’s-eye.

“Don’t move, Hugo. Don’t even blink. I’m going to drag you out of here,” I said in a wobbly voice.

I moved toward Hugo, directly into the snake’s sight line. My plan was to pull Hugo around the fallen computer stand and put that between us and the snake. As if the cobra could read my mind, it flattened and started to slither against the wall in my direction.

I heard Jacob coming along the hallway.

“Tandy!” he shouted, pounding the wall with his fist. “Tandy! Where are you?”

I glanced at the snake, terrified. All that noise couldn’t be good. “Jacob!” Hugo screeched. “We’re in here.”

The door frame in the hallway was so well concealed, you could miss it even when you knew where to look. I crawled to Hugo and got right behind him, then rose to a crouch.

“Very slowly raise your hands up,” I told him.

He reached back and I clasped his hands.

“It’s looking right at me,” Hugo whimpered. “Look at its
tongue
.”

“Just don’t look at it,” I told him. “Pretend it’s not there. We’re just playing a game.”

“Yeah, right.”

I had begun backing up slowly, sliding Hugo with me toward the doorway, when suddenly it jerked open. Jacob
hovered over us, and he was holding a very heavy-duty handgun.

“Where is it?” Jacob asked.

I pried one hand loose from Hugo’s and pointed to the snake.

“You two get out of here,” he said. “I’ll handle this.”

“You’re going to shoot it?” Hugo shouted, scrambling to his feet. “Cool! There’s no way I’m leaving now.”

14